Explanation: What powers the Heart Nebula? The large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a heart. The nebula's glow -- as well as the shape of the gas and dust clouds -- is powered by by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the nebula's newborn star cluster Melotte 15. This deep telescopic image maps the pervasive light of narrow emission lines from atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur in the nebula. The field of view spans just over two degrees on the sky, so that it appears larger than four times the diameter of a full moon. The cosmic heart is found in the constellation of Cassiopeia, the boastful mythical Queen of Aethiopia .

Striking image... love it when they say "OXYGEN"... I always find that interesting, and thrilling for some reason... I guess because before too long ago, it never really OCCURRED TO ME... the significance of that .... Cold water, ICE... the elements are made in HOT STARS... go figure.... it still stuns me, amazes me.

Well...maybe next time I am out...I can get a shot myself....We are having some good, hot weather.:---[===] *

Boomer12k wrote:Striking image... love it when they say "OXYGEN"... I always find that interesting, and thrilling for some reason... I guess because before too long ago, it never really OCCURRED TO ME... the significance of that .... Cold water, ICE... the elements are made in HOT STARS... go figure.... it still stuns me, amazes me.

Oxygen is the third most common element in the Universe. Even though there is so much less oxygen than hydrogen and helium, there is still enormous amounts of it in the universe. There can be no doubt that there are huge, huge numbers of water molecules and OH molecules in the Universe. But the question is, how much of this cosmic water is in liquid form?

That said, I suspect that the Hubble mapped color palette rather exaggerates the brightness of OIII emission in ordinary emission nebulas. At right is a photo of the Heart Nebula in RGB (red, green and blue filters). The bright blue or blue-green nebulosity seen in today's OIII, Hα and SII APOD is totally swamped by the red emission of Hα in Bob Frankes image.